


271 - Van, Homesickness, and Alternative One-Night-Stands

by storiesaboutvan



Category: Catfish and the Bottlemen (Band)
Genre: Cute meet, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 15:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14311866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesaboutvan/pseuds/storiesaboutvan
Summary: Filling the prompt “reader feeling [homesick], feeling really nostalgic and Van is just there for her. It doesn’t have to be very long, just something cute.”





	271 - Van, Homesickness, and Alternative One-Night-Stands

It does not matter how wonderful life can be, how perfect your friends are, how fun your job is, how well balanced the cocktails taste, homesickness still cuts through joy like a hot knife through butter. It’s a strange type of sad. Like grief, it comes in waves. Like the flu, it makes you ache. Like love, it makes you pine for something that isn’t real. Homesickness… it’s a prickly thing that wounds in a very real way. For you, there were very few things that could alleviate the feeling.

Alcohol equalled hangovers. Drugs were expensive. Brooding made it worse. Talking about it had no effect. Sleeping was the best you had. When you missed your family, your pets, your old life too much, you’d crawl under the covers of bed and sleep it off. Kai would pop her head in every now and then. She’d bring a glass of water for you and one for the growing collection of dying plants on your windowsill and bathroom floor. Sometimes though, she would drag you from bed.

“Y/N, come on, we’re going out,” she’d say like it was inevitable. Of course, it was. Kai had a Rosa Diaz vibe. You were her best friend but even you wouldn’t cross her. No way in Hell. “I’ll even let you borrow my leather jacket,”

“I don’t wear leather,”

“It’s faux leather but that doesn’t sound as badass. Get the fuck up.”

The night was unseasonably warm and it drew people from their houses. The bar was packed. Even the sidewalk outside was busy with smokers and underage kids with nothing better to do. Inside felt foggy, or smoky, or something. Seats were filled, but people tended to move when they saw Kai coming. She walked passed the bar, easily ordering whisky on the rocks for her and crisp white wine for you. From there, she perched herself on a stool at a newly-free table. You sat opposite her and tuned in to the music playing. Likeable, but unrecognisable.

“So, what’s been goin’ on? Where’ve you been?” Kai asked.

“Nowhere. Around,” you answered vaguely, picking at your fishnet tights. Kai was a good friend; she was the type of person to come and pick you up at 3 am if you were stranded. She was not the type of person to engage in deep and meaningfuls, however. It would feel strange to tell her much more than shallow feelings 

“Miss home?”

“Ah… Yeah… It’s okay though. Skype home a lot,”

“Not the same. But, if we can’t have home, we have booze. Cheers!” she said, holding her drink up. You laughed and held yours to her, clicking the glass together. It made a sound, but in the noisy bar neither of you heard it.

You drank slowly as Kai drank fast. Soon enough, in her drunkenness, she was unable to see your sobriety. Watching her float back and forth from bar to table, you amused yourself by counting the number of people lusting after her. Pointing them out to her, she assessed her options. Honestly, it helped. It was a good distraction from your own world. It was a couple of hours of people-watching, girly giggling fun.

“Wha’ do ya think?” Kai slurred.

“Mmmm. Cowboy Boots offered to buy you chips instead of a drink, and I like that…” you started. Kai nodded. “But Curly Hair is just beautiful… So, I guess it depends on if you want a one night stand or something more?”

Kai laughed like you’d delivered the punchline of the century. She shook her head at you then slammed the rest of her drink, slipping off her chair ungracefully in the process.

“Righteo. Curly Hair it is. I’ll, ah, order ya an Uber,” she said, pulling her phone out. You quickly stood up and stopped her.

“No. It’s okay. I’m just gonna pop over the road and get a Dr Pepper. I’ll catch a cab or something. I’m alright,”

“Noooooooo, Y/N. Can’t leave a man behind,”

“You’re not leavin’ me behind. If anything I should be worried about letting you go home with some dude when you’re this buzzed,” you said, the concern clear in your voice.

Kai grinned and shook her head again. She shrugged, then pulled you into a hug. There was no point in arguing. You watched her waltz over to Curly Hair then give you the thumbs up.

Outside, the air was still warm and the smokers were still smoking. You crossed the road and headed into the petrol station. In front of the drinks fridge, you suddenly felt tired and weirdly out of place. Pulling your borrowed jacket tightly around yourself, you stepped closer to the fridge as you listened to the store’s door open and close for people buying gas and for bar and club goers from the neighbourhood venues.

“Why’s it always so hard to decide between red and blue?” a voice asked from behind.

Assuming it was someone talking to a friend, you didn’t turn around to face them, but you stepped to the side to make way for them. A guy came to stand beside you. The movement caught your eye and you looked over at him. He was alone, hands on hips, looking at the Powerade. He looked at you and smiled.

The guy was tall and lanky, but it may have been all that black that dragged him out. Black button-up. Black denim jacket. Black jeans. Black boots. He was saved from goth by his fluffy brown hair and piercing blue eyes. Under the horrible lights of the petrol station store, you could make out all the perfect imperfections of his face. There were freckles and red spots that used to be pimples. Purple shades under his eyes and a smudge of something on his forehead. He was beautiful, bunny teeth and all.

“Hi,” he said, holding his hand out. “I’m called Van.”

You laughed before you could do anything else. His smile didn’t falter. Holding your hand out, you replied, “Ah, hi. I'm… called Y/N,”

“Nice to meet ya. So, blue or red?”

You followed his line of sight to the fridge. You never much like Powerade. It was basically cordial.

“Neither. Gross. I’d say have strawberry milk but it don’t mix with alcohol so well,” you said.

“Well, ain’t that lucky ‘cause I don’t have a drop of grog in me, love,” Van replied, opening the fridge and reaching out for strawberry milk. “Next best thing to a milkshake,” he added, already opening the cartoon and drinking it. “What are you gonna get?”

A group of people came through the door loudly. For a moment, the sound caught Van’s attention and he turned to watch. You looked at him then, trying to figure out what he was doing if not having a drunk conversation with a random person.

You picked strawberry milk too, and when Van turned back and saw it, he grinned.

“Doesn’t mix though!” he said, feigning shock.

“Well, ain’t that lucky…” you replied. Van laughed and nodded.

“Lemme buy you a drink then.”

You followed Van to the counter, where he paid the couple of bucks for the two milks. He motioned for you to continue to follow him, so you did. Almost out the door, you stopped in front of a rack of lacklustre and yielding bouquets of flowers sitting in big buckets of lukewarm water. Sitting between the buckets on the shelf were little pots of barely-alive plants. Maybe they were succulents, but they were so grey it was hard to tell. Van backed up to stand next to you.

“Sad,” he said, taking another sip of strawberry milk.

“I save them,” you told him. Looking at him as he looked at you, you could see he didn’t understand. “I buy plants from places like this, or those weird stalls out the front of peoples’ houses and stuff. The nearly dead ones. Then I save them. Make them healthy again,”

“Well, that’s dead fucking cute. You gonna get some now, or are ya going back over the road?” Van asked.

Without hesitating, you asked, “How do you know I was over the road?”

With a great deal of hesitation, Van replied, “Ah… Right, this is a lot less creepy than it’s gonna sound, but I was out the front havin’ a smoke when you came out the bar and came over 'ere,”

“You followed me?”

“No! I wanted a drink. But I just… Like… I only knew that when I saw you was getting a drink…” he tried to explain without appearing threating. It was more than clear he wasn’t. “I liked your jacket,”

“It’s not mine,”

“It should be,” Van said, not missing a beat.

“I’m gonna get these two. They’re the deadest.”

Sitting on the curb outside the petrol station, your two new plant babies on one side and Van on the other, you drank your strawberry milk and watched people come and go. Van was quiet. It was comfortable. When you both finished, Van crushed the cartoons flat and put them next to him. You wondered if he was going to leave them there or put them in the bin. He seemed like the 'use a bin’ type, but you weren’t sure what your thoughts meant by that.

“So… Why aren’t you drinking?” he asked.

Kai was easy to talk about. You brushed over some of the more private details. Feeling a bit flat. Friend dragged you out. She drank fast. You let her get her one-night-whatever. Strawberry milk.

“Why you been feelin’ flat?” Van asked then, not tentatively at all.

“Uh… bit homesick…”

The way that Van turned to watch you, nodding to show he was listening and blinking slowly with those long, long lashes… it made you want to talk. So, you did. You told Van about where you were from and who you had left behind. When you described the feeling of homesickness, his nodded got a little more enthusiastic.

“Yeah, I know that. See, I’m in a band and we’ve been touring since I was little. When we first started to get serious and go out on the road for weeks at a time, I really missed me mum and dad. I’m used to it now, so I don’t get homesick anymore, but fuck, it was hard. It’s weird, innit? Really feel it in ya stomach,” he said.

“Yes! Exactly. And, like, I know I should call home and Skype and stuff more often, but I live by myself and when I do I get really sad and it kind of sticks for days. I don’t want to make my friends emo or whatever, so… I don’t know, it’s hard,”

“Yeah. But you’re right, you should call home more. That’ll help,” Van agreed.

“Time difference,”

“Let’s go home and call 'em now. I’d love to meet everyone!” Van stood up. With a skip and a hop he put the flattened cartons in the bin, lit a cigarette, then held a hand out to you. “Yeah?”

“What?”

“I’ll get us a cab. We’ll connect the, ah, world wide web and call home. It will make you feel loads better, love,”

“We don’t know each other,” you stated.

“Ever hooked up with someone you just met? Gone home with them? Had them at yours?” Van asked, his face all expectant and smug. You rolled your eyes and nodded. “Right? So, this is the same except we don’t need the excuse of bein’ smashed. You’re dead cute. I wanna know you. So… let’s do something.”

The contention was one of logic. In fact, it was all sorts of pure. A one-night-stand that promised not sloppy, drunk sex, but comforting conversation.

Van held his hand out again and twinkled his fingers. You reached up and took it, letting him pull you up and lead you over to the road. He hailed a taxi that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Sitting side by side on the back seat of the cab, you let Van keep a hold of your hand. He was warm. That’s the only reason you could think of, but you didn’t think about it too hard. Van was just so easy to follow, agree with, go along with.

As soon as you unlocked the door to your apartment, Van was inside and flicking the kettle on like he’d been there before. 

“I’ll make us tea while you put your little dead plants somewhere,” he said, opening cupboards freely in search of mugs.

Once you’d watered the unidentifiable plants and put them under the lamp on your windowsill, you walked and found Van sitting on your couch. His boots had been kicked off and he looked pretty cosy. Sitting next to him, you picked up your laptop.

“Were you serious about calling home?” you asked him, hoping for a yes but scared for it anyway. He nodded.

There were multiple people online, Skype said. Van sipped his tea and smiled reassuringly as you called.

As you were updated about all the comings and goings, all the births, deaths, marriages, mishaps, adventures of home, you could feel some of that sickness in your stomach dissipate. Home was happy to hear from you too. There were a lot of 'We wondered when you’d call!’ and 'You too good for us, Y/N?' 

Over an hour after arriving back at your apartment, you were finally offline and sitting back on the couch, calm at almost 5 am. 

“Do you want to see my plants?” you asked Van suddenly. Deflection. A defence mechanism from the exhaustion born of the moment. You wanted to lie down and cry, sleep, maybe even sob. And, Van could see it in you. Where you were tense before, you were deflated. More than anything else, you looked tired. Even your sentence had come out tumbling and quiet.

“Yeah,” he replied softly.

Van didn’t have any particular interest in plants, nor did he know much about them. Regardless, he took his time looking at each plant, making comments when he could think of them. You sat on your bed, back against the headboard and eyelids growing more and more heavy by the second. It was getting harder to stay awake.

When your eyes opened Van was lying next to you.

“You fell asleep,” he whispered. “Only been a couple of minutes,”

“Where’re you doing?” you whispered back, voice messy with sleep and emotion.

“What do you mean?”

“Like… Isn’t this weird?” you asked. 

Van thought for a second. You thought maybe he’d ask, 'Isn’t what weird?’ Maybe he wasn’t on the same page as you. Maybe in his mind, it was always meant to be a one-night-stand. Maybe the caring, the conversations, was all a tactic.

“Nah, love,” Van answered, then moved to push the blanket down the bed. You followed his lead and got under the covers with him. “Or, I don’t know… maybe? Who cares though, you know what I mean? You feeling any better? You’ve gone all quiet and sleepy. Takin’ that as a good sign?”

“Yeah… Weird, but better. Thank you, I guess,” you replied, mumbling.

“Just had a thought though. Your mate, what was 'er name? Kate? Kayla?”

“Kai,”

“Right, sorry. Kai. Did ya wanna send 'er a message? 'Got home safe’ kind of thing?” Van asked.

You groaned and nodded. The boy was a thinker. The boy was a 'got home safe’ texter. The boy was something.

It didn’t matter how wonderful life could be, how perfect your friends were, how fun your job was, how well balanced the cocktails tasted, homesickness still cut through joy like a hot knife through butter. For you, there were very few things that could alleviate the feeling. Alcohol. Drugs. Brooding. Talk. Nah. But maybe… maybe a weird sexless one-night-stand where a boy all in black told you to call home and held your hand while you did it could be medicine.

Van stayed the night. You slept soundly next to him. He didn’t snore, but he breathed audibly, like a puppy or a kitten. Watching his chest rise and fall, you wondered when he stripped of his jeans and shirt. By the same token, when had your denim skirt come off? When he woke up, Van grinned and wriggled his eyebrows. Having no idea what he meant, you just rolled your eyes then rolled out of bed.

“Tea?” you asked him, walking from the room.

“Please. Oh, oi! Can I wear this nightgown you got here? Oh man, I feel like Scarface!”


End file.
